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Renault team officials will appear at a World Motor Sport Council hearing tomorrow to face the latest allegations in F1’s spying scandal.

Renault is accused of having unauthorized possession of documents detailing McLaren cars.

The council must decide whether Renault gained an unfair advantage last season from information relating to McLaren’s fueling system, gear assembly, oil cooling system, hydraulic control system and a suspension component used in 2006 and 2007.

If found guilty, Renault could be handed a penalty similar to the US$100 million fine imposed on McLaren in September for using confidential data from Ferrari.

McLaren was also kicked out of the manufacturers’ championship, but drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were not docked points. Hamilton finished second and Alonso third in the drivers’ championship.

McLaren alleges that Phil Mackereth, a former engineer, took several CDs worth of data with him to Renault after leaving McLaren in September 2006.

Baker McKenzie, McLaren’s law firm, has said in a submission to the council that these actions provided ‘a clear benefit and unfair advantage’ to Renault.

Renault said it suspended Mackereth in September as soon as it had learned of his actions and then alerted McLaren and governing body FIA.

McLaren’s memo says that 33 files containing more than 780 individual drawings outlining the entire technical blueprint of the McLaren cars were copied onto 11 floppy disks in March 2006.

McLaren says the disks were loaded onto 11 Renault F1 computers when Mackereth arrived at Renault and were then discussed at top senior level by a group of seven senior engineering chiefs and heads of department.

Renault said the information covers only four ‘basic systems,’ one of which was obsolete, and denied it influenced the design of its racing car in any way.

McLaren was again in the news on Nov. 16 when the FIA rejected its appeal to penalize four rival drivers for fuel irregularities at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix.

The rejected appeal meant Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen kept his title.

Hamilton finished seventh in the race, and would have taken the title if two of the three drivers who finished ahead of him had been disqualified. Renault finished third in the manufacturers’ championship with 51 points.